[ExI] ET Emergence (Was Re: Uploads as a group of AI agents)

Tue Mar 31 13:40:48 UTC 2026

On Tue, Mar 31, 2026, 7:30 AM John Clark <johnkclark at gmail.com> wrote:

> On Mon, Mar 30, 2026 at 9:21 AM Jason Resch via extropy-chat <
> extropy-chat at lists.extropy.org> wrote:
>
> *>> I see no reason to think that BOTH Dyson style megastructures AND **Drexler
>>> style Nanotechnology **won't happen because I assume you can never have
>>> too much computational ability. Yes, more efficiency means more
>>> computation, but so does more energy. And in the last couple of years it
>>> should be obvious why those who think ET will not want vast amounts of
>>> energy because they will upload is not a tenable hypothesis; unless you
>>> assume *
>>>
>>
>> *> There are lots of assumptions that lead away from obvious
>> megastructures. Chief among them being that we assume solar radiation is an
>> optimum energy source (that it has the right power density, and temperature
>> needed for running the sorts of computers that are optimal). It is quite
>> likely this assumption is wrong,*
>>
>
> *If ET has found something better than Dyson Spheres/Swarms, an easy way
> to make more energy than 400 billion stars can, then that's fine
> but according to the Second Law Of Thermodynamics, regardless of how ET is
> making that energy, he is going to be producing an amount of waste heat in
> the form of infrared radiation that is literally astronomical, but we don't
> see the slightest hint of that in this galaxy or an in the other.  *
>
> *> Consider: reversible computing technology enables 1 kg of matter to
>> perform more computations per second than 100 Dyson swarms.*
>>
>
> *That is ridiculous. It's true that with a reversible computer you could
> theoretically complete any calculation using an arbitrarily small amount of
> energy, however the smaller your energy usage is the slower your
> calculation is, and as your energy usage approaches zero the time to
> complete your calculation approaches infinity.  *
>

What's your source for this? As far as I have seen, energy usage has
nothing to do with the speed of a reversible computer.

Consider that the glass of water on your desk is performing 10^50
reversible operations per second per kilogram, and it isn't emitting any
waste heat.

> *>>> Consider: if the asteroid they wiped out dinosaurs never hit, would
>>>> dinosaurs have had their own space program millions of years ago?*
>>>>
>>>
>>> *>> Probably not. The era of dinosaurs lasted for 165 million years but
>>> the T Rex only became extinct 66 million years ago, so we are closer in
>>> time to the era of a T Rex than a T Rex was from the era of an early
>>> dinosaur like the Stegosaur. However I don't think a T Rex was
>>> significantly closer to building a spaceship than a Stegosaur was. *
>>>
>>
>> *> I looked it up just now because I was curious. Apparently the T-Rex
>> had quite a large brain (300-400 grams), which might have given it an
>> intelligence closer to that of a baboon.*
>>
>
> *That was a 2023 claim by one scientist that the brain of a T-Rex
> contained 3.3 billion neurons, about the same as that of a baboon, however
> in 2026 it has been almost universally disputed by the scientific community
> and the general consensus is that it's more like 245 to 360 million
> neurons, about the same is a modern crocodile.  And a T-Rex weighed about
> 30 times as much as the largest modern crocodile, and 600 times as much as
> a baboon.  *
>

I've long thought the body mass to brain mass thing was bogus, a clumsy way
to elevate humans over other creatures. A better way to account for the
neurons in the body is to consider the mass of the brainstem. The  subtract
the brainstem from the rest of the brain to see what is left.

> *For great intelligence to be useful an animal needs hands with opposable
> thumbs or some other organ that can delicately manipulate matter,*
>

When there are social dynamics and kne must kit think others of your same
species to win mates, then there's no upper bound on selection pressure for
intelligence. That may explain what happens with whales. Their bodies are
so large that it costs them very metabolically little to have a much larger
brain. The relative benefits even if minor, can be justified. I think this
explains why larger animals tend to have larger brains. Not because so many
larger brains are needed to control a larger body, but because a larger
brain can be supported more easily (for a lower relative metabolic cost).

* but the arms of a T-Rex were so short they couldn't even touch each other
> or reach its mouth.*
>

It helps predators which must predict what their prey knows, or how it will
react to a particular ambush, what escape routes it might take, whether or
not it can win a fight against another T-Rex for kra territory and whether
the fight is worth the risk, etc.

 *If a zebra on the African Savanna had an IQ of 200 that wouldn't help get
> its genes into the next generation very much, and that's why it never
> evolved to get that smart. *
>

Why then are crows so smart?

*Perhaps a brilliant zebra would have a few minor advantages but
> unless it had opposable thumbs or something equivalent it would not
> be worth the price it would have to pay for being smart. The human brain
> only amounts to  2% of the body weight of a human but it consumes 20% of
> the body's energy.  *
>
> *And there are other disadvantages in having a large brain, a baby must
> get through a female's birth canal, and that means most of the growth of
> the brain must occur after birth, and that means for many years after birth
> the young are completely helpless, and that places a huge burden on the
> parents that can last for over a decade.  *
>

None of those problems apply as severely to creatures that are already
large.

Also note that babies have more neurons than adults. It's not the brain
growth that takes decades, but rather the amount of learning and teaching
that is required necessitates long periods of parenting. Consider that a
dolphin also spends nearly a decade with its mother.

>
>> *> Intelligence arises across all areas of the animals kingdom, from
>> crows and parrots, to cuttlefish and octopuses, rays and cleaner wrasses,
>> to elephants and dolphins.*
>>
>
> *And yet none of those species have even come close to building a radio
> telescope, in the last 3.8 billion years only one species has managed to do
> so. *
>

You could have said the same about us only a few tens of thousands of years
ago.

My point stands that intelligence is broadly useful and is selected for
over and over again across various species.

Jason

>
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